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| Customs officers check documents at the Lok Ma Chau checkpoint at the Shenzhen border crossing with mainland China in Hong Kong, Sunday. AFP-Yonhap |
By Ko Dong-hwan
Korean health authorities are closely watching travelers arriving from China as the neighboring country is struggling under the weight of an explosion in cases of COVID-19 with its effects seemingly out of control.
The number of infected travelers arriving from China remains within a stable range of 60 to 70 per day. But experts say that considering that the virus can remain latent inside patients before showing symptoms, the situation requires at least one to two additional weeks to monitor how it will unfold here.
Earlier this month, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) required travelers from China to present a negative COVID-19 test before boarding their flights in China. Last Thursday, the authorities further raised the bar by requiring arrivals to take a second test on landing and quarantining those who test positive.
The KDCA said Sunday that a total of 277 infection cases were recorded in arrivals from China between Jan. 2 and 5. Taking into account the total number of travelers being tested, this means over 23 percent of them tested positive upon arriving in Korea during the period. The figure translates to roughly 70 infection cases per day.
However, the capacity of public quarantine facilities in Korea remains stable. As of Sunday, over 60 patients from China are being quarantined at state-operated facilities while the rest are practicing social distancing measures away from the public at their accommodation. Some 30 percent of the country's overall public quarantine accommodations ― initially prepared for 205 patients in 113 rooms in three different facilities ― are up and running as of Sunday morning.
The accommodations reserved for COVID-19 patients in critical condition currently remains well below capacity, with 38 percent occupied and more than 900 rooms available as of Sunday.
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| People wait outside a funeral home in Shanghai, Jan. 5. Skyrocketing deaths of COVID-19 patients in China are crowding the country's funeral homes, as bereaved families face long waits for the bodies to be cremated or processed. Reuter-Yonhap |
Observers say the newly added measures for inbound travelers from China contributed to maintaining Korea's local infection numbers low.
There had been concerns about the efficacy of testing travelers from China only once. The KDCA last month mentioned the necessity for double-screening and said it would deploy the measure the following month. On Saturday, the measure was extended to inbound travelers from Hong Kong and Macau.
China stopped enforcing its own mandatory quarantine regulations for inbound travelers on Sunday, which had kept its borders virtually sealed for the past three years. This decision will also likely have an impact on Korea's COVID-19 cases.
Experts said Sunday that together with Southeast Asian countries that remain lax on screening travelers for COVID-19 due to their reliance on tourism, China will also likely start allowing more outbound travelers to visit Korea, which is likely to increase infections here.
The KDCA was considering bringing down the country's safety measure level by one notch by adjusting the current indoor face mask rules from "mandatory" to "recommended."
The number of daily new COVID-19 infection cases over the past two weeks has been going in a consistently downward direction. From over 81,000 last Monday, the number of daily new infections has continued to drop, reaching the lowest point of this month with just over 46,000 on Sunday. Among them, 132 were from outside the country, 103 of whom were from China. Thirty-four died from the disease on Saturday, down 26 from the previous day. The weekly average fatality rate among patients has remained below 0.10 percent. The country's overall hospital bed availability for patients in critical condition has also been under 50 percent of capacity for four consecutive weeks.
However, the number of COVID-19 patients in critical condition in the country throughout the past two weeks has remained between 500 and 600. As well, the vaccination rate remains low among those with high infection risk ― at 50 percent for those aged 60 and older, and 60 percent for those frequently exposed to spaces with high contagious risks.
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